[CQ-Contest] Shorten CW SS

[Pete Smith]

At 02:50 PM 11/7/00 -0600, Brakob, Hans wrote:
...
>For Pete, Dave, and 20 or 30 other stations at the top
>of the standings, the above is probably a fair description
>of the situation.
>
>For the other 2,000 or so of the rest of us lower in the
>food chain (who feed your log), it's pure fantasy.  We are
>those with the "however pitiful" stations, and SS is the
>one major contest each year in which we can hope to "be
>somebody".  

Whoah, Hans, you give me too much credit!  I'll be lucky to be in the top
100.  Heck, my score's 4th in our club (so far), probably headed lower.
And I never even thought of SO2R.

I totally agree with you about the appeal of SS for smaller stations.  The
first time I broke 100K was with 100 watts and a stealth wire loop in the
trees behind a townhouse.  This is a contest where you don't have to have a
top station to feel good about what you can accomplish.

That being said, I'll admit that I didn't fully consider the implications
of a downturn in the sunspot cycle over the next few years, and the ways
that might change things.   Could be this would indeed change the bias of
the contest toward people with big low-band capabilities, which isn't
attractive.

How about another modest proposal -- leave the contest period as it is now,
but make it 16 or 20 hours instead of 24.  That way, the SO2R big dogs
would turn off their CQ machines when they ran out of time, and everyone
else could clean up with each other afterward.

73, Pete Smith N4ZR

Contesting is ... Extreme Radio

The World Contest Station Database 
is back up and running at
http://www.qsl.net/n4zr 



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